American political scientist and entrepreneur Ian Bremmer on the election results in India, its growing strategic importance and how the American democracy is in crisis. The conversation was moderated by Aakash Joshi, Deputy Associate Editor, The Indian Express
Aakash Joshi: You have been following the Indian elections and politics closely. Will this coalition government, marked by continuity, be seen as a stable government?
I see India today as I’ve seen India for the last decade — as the strongest and most stable democracy with the strongest leadership, certainly in the Global South and in many ways around the world. Narendra Modi is now in a coalition. But it also means 15 years of driving of a consistent foreign policy, security policy and economic policy. That is unusual, even exceptional for a well-functioning democracy. It makes it much easier for foreign governments and multinational corporations to rely on India. It’s certainly true that Modi underperformed with being nowhere close to the 400 seats but the NDA coalition has a Cabinet that’s already formed. Most of the notable ministries are with the BJP. This speaks of a government that Modi is going to have control over. I’m sure he’s going to have to negotiate and provide more to the states where his two regional partners are dominant, and that will slow down some of the new economic reform process, for example in agriculture. But it will also sort of reduce some of the strongman tendencies that you’ve seen from India’s leadership. Greater checks and balances are a good thing for a democracy.
Aakash Joshi: We’ve seen foreign policy becoming a part of political campaigning more than ever before. But we’ve got two kinds of feedback over the last 10 years. One has been of the hyperbole that India has never been as respected before. The other is that India is now seen as a “declining” democracy. What is your opinion?
It’s overwhelmingly the former. It is true that there are aspects of Indian democracy that are problematic. Of course, there are aspects of American democracy that are even more problematic. The US has slipped more as a political system in a liberal democracy in the last 30 years than India has. The US has a hard time even holding a free and fair election that is seen as legitimate by its population. India just had elections, Modi didn’t do so well, and everyone recognises it was a free and fair election. That’s a sign of a strong and healthy democracy. When I was working on my PhD in 1989, people around the world looked at the US as the shining light. They wanted their political system to run more like the US. In 2024, a lot of people want to move to the US, invest in American markets, and send their kids to American universities but nobody says, ‘I wish my political system ran like Washington.’
On India: India has mattered more strategically over the last 10 years across the world. Finally, India’s economy is starting to catch up with its growing strategic importance
Yet, the US continues to be the most powerful country and is driving greater strategic relationships, international architecture, Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), AUKUS, Indo-Pacific framework, all of which India and many other countries in Asia want to be a stronger part of. India is respected in the Global South and has been very successful at chairing the G20 over the last two years. It is also seen as a bridge to the US, Japan, the UAE, and, increasingly, to Europe as well. That’s somewhere that Modi, almost singularly, and S Jaishankar (External Affairs Minister), have done great work in. They’ve allowed India to punch above its weight. India has mattered more strategically over the last 10 years across the world. Finally, India’s economy is starting to catch up with its growing strategic importance.
Aakash Joshi: How much does a Trump presidency affect India and other non-NATO US partners in the region?
For many allies of the US, the prospect of a Trump presidency is deeply concerning. Trump says he’s going to end the war in Ukraine in one day, and if you’re a frontline NATO country, you think that Trump is a crisis for you. There are other countries in the world that are deeply concerned about Trump’s lack of climate agenda, his greater transactionalism on trade deficits, willingness to put tariffs. He’s talked about a 10 per cent tariff on all exports to the US. That would clearly have a negative effect on the Indian economy. The more important point for India is that a US-China relationship under Trump would be under significantly greater pressure.
On the political side, the fact that the US and China would have a more tense relationship would benefit India strategically. Modi is one of the few leaders in the world who really doesn’t care that much personally whether Biden or Trump wins. But there would be greater uncertainty. India is, right now, trying to navigate a world that has much greater geopolitical uncertainty because of all the industrial policy, subsidies, as well as sanctions and tariffs because of two major wars going on in the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine, and tensions in the US-China relationship. If you’re India, you just want a stable global environment to grow your economy.
On Us-China: many Americans are prepared to say that China can’t do anything right. The fact is that China is overall close to a technological parity with the US. When you talk about transition energy, they’re way ahead
Aakash Joshi: Through the Ukraine war, Delhi has managed to keep our channels open with Russia. How do you assess that kind of balancing in this uncertain geopolitical climate?
This year was the 11th time that India has been invited to attend the G7 as an observer. There was a time when the Russians were the G7 plus-one. If there was a plus-one to the G7 right now, it would probably be India because of its economic size and growing strategic alignment. There is a lot of constructive engagement between India and the G7, including on Russia-Ukraine. India is buying a lot of goods from Russia, particularly oil. That is in explicit alignment with US policy. The US is not trying to prevent the Russians from exporting oil because it would lead to a global recession. Right now, it’s escalating in terms of the use of frozen assets and targeting of NATO weaponry into Russia. We could see a time where India would be pressured to do a lot less with Russia.
Pooja Pillai: What is the response to Trump’s conviction among his supporters? What does that mean for the US election and the world eventually?
In terms of the way they’re going to vote, it has had virtually no impact — 34 convictions, felony convictions, are unprecedented in the US. That should mean that Trump should not be viable as a presidential candidate. But it doesn’t mean that. He is arguing that this is a politicised case that wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else. It’s the least serious case of the indictments that he is facing, much less serious than the Georgia case of trying to overturn the election, the Florida case of stealing and then lying and obscuring classified documents, the Washington DC case of abetting insurrection on January 6. But none of those cases are going to come to resolution before the November elections. So, in my view, this is not going to have a significant outcome, but it does have a significant impact on how we think about the US in terms of the rule of law and a sustainable democracy.
US democracy is in crisis right now and there are many American voters who will not accept the outcome of this election. In 2020, the argument was that the election was legitimate, but the vote was rigged, which is not true. Trump is running on that. Today, the argument is that the election is illegitimate, not the vote. The Democrats will say Trump should not be eligible to run for office because of the two impeachments that were politically incapable of reaching conviction, even though there were Republicans that voted to convict him in the second impeachment. A vote to convict is a vote that says that you can never run for President.
If you go to our top risks that we put out every year, as we did in January this year, despite all the concerns of US-China, the Middle East war, Ukraine war, the number one risk was the US versus itself. The Americans versus the Americans is the most dangerous war out there. This is a horrible election and no American wants to have it.
Anant Goenka: There are two Indias — one which agrees with the ideas of the BJP, and another that doesn’t. Is there something about polarisation in America that could happen in India?
India is obviously a country with far more poverty and far less, in that regard, time and energy spent by the average citizen on high-level politics. We’re just at a different part of Maslow’s triangle of self-actualisation. You’re nowhere close to the middle-income trap. When you’ve got a country that is growing at six-seven-eight per cent a year, there’s still a lot you can do that can make the average citizen feel like they have a bright future. That undermines polarisation. In a sense, political polarisation is a bit of a malaise that comes from ennui. It comes from a level where your basic needs are taken care of but now you feel you’ve got bigger demands.
China’s gone through a very different political system but for 40 years the population felt good about the fact that economically they were going to have opportunities. India is finally on that path. It was a lot easier when Modi first came in because there was so much corruption and no digitisation. So you could help people without blowing out the budget. You could just improve efficiency and win. India is beyond that. But it’s too pessimistic to say that India at this stage of development is heading towards where the US or Europe is.
Adya Goyal: In the US, students in Columbia University were protesting against what is happening in Palestine. Similar protests took place in European colleges. Why is there a difference in the nature of student protests across regions?
The demonstrations and the number of students demonstrating have been extremely small. They’re mostly in elite universities. But, of course, you have an environment that it’s politically polarised. You have a small number of political activists on the Right and on the Left in the campuses, and more importantly outside the campuses, who are looking for extreme statements to promote and say, ‘look at these crazy Hamas supporters’, or ‘look at these crazy Islamophobic Jews.’ It’s true that young people in America, like in Europe, are more sympathetic to Palestinians because they see them as the underdog and think that ethnic cleansing and genocide is going on in Gaza right now. That doesn’t mean they support Hamas. Almost none of them support Hamas, but they don’t support the US-Israel policy as well.
Rishika Singh: The US has, for long, championed values such as liberty and free trade but in the last few years, particularly with regard to China, they’ve placed a lot of bans on semiconductor technology and other kinds of high-level technology, citing security concerns. How do you rate these bans in terms of legitimacy?
When you talk about access to the US market, that’s a choice that’s made by the American government. And that’s also true for China. China doesn’t allow Google, Facebook or Wikipedia to operate. I wish they would, but they see those companies as a systemic challenge to the Chinese political system. The Americans see Huawei as a national security challenge to the American system. The US is not only doing that domestically but increasingly leveraging relations with their allies to ensure that nobody is providing the Chinese with high-level semiconductors. They’re now talking about the same with software. It’s within the right of the US and other countries to make those decisions. It starts looking unfair if the Americans are coercing other countries to do it against their will. In principle, you want to see the US investing in being the best competitor globally. To that extent, the Americans have paid no attention to their semiconductor industry for the last 25 years and allowed it to be exported to mainland China. The Chinese increasingly have a lot more influence over Taiwan economically, politically and strategically, and you can understand why the Americans are panicking a bit.
Anant Goenka: You’d said the obituaries on China are premature, and that China will bounce back. Is it bouncing back?
There are way too many Americans who are prepared to say that China can’t do anything right. The fact is that China is overall close to a technological parity with the US. When you talk about transition energy, they’re way ahead. It’s a huge mistake to be overconfident.
Mike McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, saw Putin meeting Kim Jong-un (North Korean leader) and immediately said, look at the desperation.
When I look at Putin with all the oil, gas, uranium, precious metals and land, the size of his conventional military and his nuclear forces, and I look at his relationship with China, I look at the unwillingness of the Americans to take pain by really hurting Russia. I look at the ability of the Russians to deter NATO. When I see him meeting Kim Jong-un, I don’t see desperation. I see danger. I see the emergence of a couple of countries that are chaos actors. They are pariahs for the West but they’re not pariahs for India, China or the developing world. They are not pariahs for the BRICS. Even for the Americans and the Europeans, how many companies are still doing business there? We have to be careful before we write off China and Russia.
Anant Goenka: How do you describe G7’s decision to lend Ukraine $50 billion backed by $300 billion frozen Russian assets?
They’re spending a lot of money to ensure that the Ukrainians don’t lose more territory. I support that because I think the invasion was illegal. It would have been more effective to stop Putin before he invaded Ukraine in 2022, to be tougher after 2014. Now it’s a lot more expensive and we’re all paying for that. But I also recognise the unwillingness of the West to take pain themselves. You still want to do business. If you sell the business now, you’re not going to get any money for it. The Russians can just take advantage. So, I guess, we should probably keep a lot of those businesses there. You can’t cut off Russian oil because it would be a real cost for the global economy. You can’t cut off Russian uranium because then the reactors wouldn’t work. If you’re only willing to spar with them, play fight with them, then they’re obviously not going to take you seriously.
I wrote this in our top risks: we expect that Ukraine will be partitioned. Not because I want that outcome. I think it’s horrible. Ukraine should get all their land back. Crimea is a different story… The rest of Ukraine should clearly be Ukrainian territory. There should be (accountability for) war crimes and war reparations. But that’s not going to happen because the West is too unwilling to create leadership. It’s a G-Zero. It’s not a G7. Putin is advantaged in a G-Zero.
Quick Questions
One thing that India could have done better in its relationship with China?
The engagement that you’re seeing now by Modi should have been done earlier.
The biggest geopolitical challenge PM Modi faces right now?
Maintaining stable relations with China, given that it’s your most important trade partner.
The one concern that global investors have about India today?
What they should be concerned about long-term is climate change and water.
The rise of Chinese science: welcoming or worrying?
Both.
Is there an Opposition anywhere in the world that the Congress party in India can learn from?
Yes, the Labour Party in the UK. When you’re out of power for a long time, you need to get rid of incapable leaders, you need to focus on policies that matter, and you need to take advantage of the mistakes being made by the party in power.
Is BRICS currency a good idea or a bad idea?
I don’t think it’s very important
Japan ended its 17-year negative interest rate regime. Will it impact India?
It’s one of India’s most important relationships. Japan is becoming a little less important on the global stage, but it’s very useful for India to strengthen that relationship.
